Apologies for writing nothing but Detective Conan posts (have even more in store possibly), but it’s literally all I’ve been watching recently.

I recently caught up to Detective Conan (yes, I did it, but it was an unbelievably self-destructive exercise given how fast I did it).I’ve been pondering how it will end for quite some time. I do this often for a lot of long lived series, but this particular series has confused me a bit more than usual.

Note: This is just hypothetical question asking, I won’t mention recent spoilers or anything.

When I first started watching Conan, I switched to the manga eventually and raced ahead. I watched a few episodes a bit later and the London Arc was what I watched. I watched it because finally after decades, it had actual romantic development between Kudo and Ran. And while I was super happy about that, I came away with incredible admiration for one particular case character.

Now, as I hit the episodes on my current watch (617-621), and got into the case, a sudden anticipation hit me when the final tennis match started. I was shaking with excitement, for what awaited me at the end of this arc were the Herculean feats of Minerva Glass, the Grass Court Queen.

Note: Spoilers so go watch those episodes/read the corresponding chapters.

I’ve been marathoning Detective Conan as of late (it’s pretty much all I’ve been doing lately). I watched a lot of the anime before and was even up to date with the manga at one point. I’ve been really enjoying my rewatch of the show, but have found it hard to articulate exactly what it is I love so much about Detective Conan.

Irrespective of what muddled words I come up with in this post, I want to emphasize that Detective Conan (or Case Closed) is a legitimately great show everyone should try.

This blog has been starving for content, so let’s make do with a nice easy post! I haven’t seen too much this season (spending all my anime time rewatching Detective Conan!), but figured I’d jot down a few thoughts anyway.

I recently made this post on Chuuni Web Novels and this is a pseudo-sequel that is a fair bit less personal. You don’t need to read that one first. A lot of this post is actually just me talking about the few web novels I’ve read. It’s a weird post.

In my previous post I mentioned that web novel protagonists often lead the life the reader, and perhaps the author, wishes to lead. This raw, from the heart (if you will), story telling can lead to a strong sense of resonance if you identify strongly with the main character, but questionable politics and some less good things tend to sneak through as well.

[Note: Once more I sort of assume that the readers and perhaps the author are approaching this fiction from a chuuni delusion/self-insert perspective. That is by no means the only way to engage with this fiction and I am confident very few folk only engage in that mode. It is an assumption made to ground this post.]

This is a bit of a wishy-washy post, but all of my posts these days are. This is may also be taken as an insult or a hot take and uhh, sorry about that.

It can be hard accepting negative opinions on stuff you like. There is a reason ANN forums, reddit comments for a review or CR comments etc, are often full of disdain for the author who just ‘doesn’t get it’.

And of course, it is pretty bad if you argue (like most people on the net) using flaky reasoning and personal attacks. If anything, I strongly recommend you just don’t bother. 99.9% of the time, your ‘objective reasoning’ will simply be a matter of taste or priorities (some need x in an anime to be good, others prefer y to be good).

Still, it comes from an understandable place. You don’t like it when something you liked was disliked. It makes you feel like you were wrong to dislike it.

It has taken me 6+ years, but I’ve finally grown an opinion shield, I can handle hot takes about the anime I like….well, not entirely, especially not on twitter.

For the uninitiated, a web novel is just well, a story published on the web. In this particular context, I’m referring to the stories that get written chapter by chapter in Japan then translated over for us. I’ve been thinking a little about how these stories come to be and why I read them and figured I’d do a haphazard job of putting it into words.

I’ve been procrastinating on blog posts and while trying to put coherent thoughts and posts together, I figured I’d just write a few sentences on everyone’s favourite 2016 maid: Rem from ReZero.

I want to quickly clarify that I’ve only seen up to episode 09 or so of ReZero so everything that happens after I’ve only gleamed from twitter conversations. So, I never got to exerpeince Rem /at her best/, but figured I’d talk anyway. Spoilers up to and including episode 08.

There is some mysterious pink hair character in the above two images, but I’m lacking in screencaps of Rem by herself.